


Submersion

by carriedon_awolfsback



Category: Ghost (Sweden Band)
Genre: A healthy amount of sass, F/M, I'm serious man your champagne is getting warm, Ice Play, Misuse of a complimentary ice bucket, POV Second Person, Spanking but only a lil bit, Temperature Play, x reader fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 23:39:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15593355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carriedon_awolfsback/pseuds/carriedon_awolfsback
Summary: Your town is in the jaws of a truly nasty heatwave, but your... old friend and his entourage only come to this part of the world once in a blue moon. You'll both be damned (more than you already are, obviously) if you can't find a work-around for the mood-ruining heat.





	Submersion

**Author's Note:**

> I have no excuse whatsoever for this. There's been a heatwave where I am for nearly two solid months, and I'm only human.

“Mm... mmh, it’s too hot-“

“So worked up already, darling?” The Cardinal looked up from the junction of your neck and shoulder, his voice purring and licking his lips from lapping at your skin, which was now patched here and there with his black makeup. His long legs were interlaced with yours, his arms propping him up while he suckled at your throat and slid his hips against your thigh, your bare bodies pressed together. “But we’ve barely gotten started.”

“I mean the room is too fucking hot, idiot.” You shoved at his chest. “God, that air con is less use than you. Hold off, I feel rough.” Everything was going a bit swirly, and breathing the thick hot air felt difficult, and it definitely wasn’t solely because of Copia’s mouth working away on your sensitive neck.

He made an indignant sound but disentangled himself and sat back on his haunches, his brows knitting slightly in concern for you. “Have you been drinking enough? Did you drink water during the ritual, hmm?”

This was, to use a technical and legal term, bullshit. The first time in a long while that your dear Church’s band project had actually found a venue in your own city that would let them hold their thinly-veiled Black Mass, instead of cajoling you into travelling miles and miles to find them, and it had to be at the height of summer in the middle of the worst heatwave you could remember. It was the small hours, blanketed in darkness, and still the air was hot and humid enough to cut a chunk out of with a knife, leaving everything feeling clammy and constricted, sweat stippling all over you and pooling uncomfortably anywhere on your body that stayed folded over against itself for too long. The air conditioning unit was doing its best and the balcony door and windows were open with the silky curtains billowing in the faint, unsatisfying breeze; this was definitely no cheap motel room, but it was just too hot.

And it was fucking ruining the sordid one-night post-show rendezvous you’d been excited for for weeks (in honesty, that you’d been excited for for months, ever since your last holiday visit to the actual Church itself and your last week-long romp with the Cardinal, in celebration of his…promotion). You hadn’t taken any time to enjoy undressing each other, because it was so bastard hot you’d both just wanted to claw off your own clothes and get the air conditioning on your bare skin as quickly as possible. It was proving impossible to even touch each other without the added warmth of aroused flesh on flesh feeling like it was going to blister your skin. And now, instead of enjoying a gleeful filthy reunion in the thickly-blanketed king-sized bed (and on the floor, against the wall, and over the dressing table), you had a banging, spinning headache, and he was scolding your hydration habits like a kindergarten teacher.

He’d had a bottle of champagne put on ice in the room ready for when you arrived, and that was what he was examining now. His ass looked adorable, round and plump perched on the side of the bed, and it was absolutely fucking inhumane that you couldn’t scrape together the energy to sidle up close to him and give it a good squeeze.

“This is no good,” he sighed, squinting at the label. “Alcohol, it’ll only make you feel worse in the heat. Little bit of a waste, really.” Then inspiration seemed to strike. “Aha!”

He replaced the bottle, and instead, scooped up a handful of ice cubes from the bucket triumphantly.

“I’m not sucking on free ice.” You wrinkled your nose at him. “You don’t even know where that water’s come from. Might be rough old tap water that’s been sitting in the freezer for ages.”

“No, no. Not to eat. Here.” He reached out to you, selecting the biggest cube from his handful and returning the others to the the bucket. “Hold out your hand.”

Rather than placing the ice in your hand to hold, as you expected, he held the little cube himself between thumb and forefinger instead, and pressed it softly to your inside wrist when you reached back to him, moving it in light circles over your flushed skin. You took in a small breath from the sting.

“Ice applied to pulse points cools the circulating blood,” he explained, breaking the rhythmic circular pattern every now and then to run the now slippery ice up the length of your forearm and back again. Maybe it was just a placebo, maybe it was more about the rhythm than the temperature, but now after the initial nip of the frozen surface, it did feel soothing. You sighed lightly, watching the ice swirl on your arm, not paying attention to his gaze which was searching your face intently, eyes narrowing ever so slightly at your response.

“Let me try here.” He reached out, closing the gap between you a little more, and brought the fresh cube to the sensitive spot on your neck that he had been nipping at just a few minutes before.

If the ice on your wrist had been hypnotic and soothing like a lick, the sensation on your throat was a determined bite that sent your eyelids fluttering and your breath hitching in surprise and enjoyment.

“Is that nice?” He smirked, nibbling on the edge of his lower lip. “Because that’s a very nice face.” His fingers shifted against your neck, taking the ice between his index and middle finger so he could glide it up and down over your pulse point while also thumbing your jawline gently; all the sensitive spots that usually his hot mouth would minister to. “Mm. If that’s how you usually look when my face is busy buried in your neck, I must try this from a distance more often. Now… lie down.”

You let his empty hand push you back gently onto the sheets by the shoulder. “Turn over,” he added, nudging your legs apart so he could kneel between them, a motion which made your stomach lurch with nervous excitement. They never quite went away, the brief little flutter of nerves and surge of wetness you always felt when he got above you, no matter how many times you reunited.

“Where’s this going?” You obliged him, keeping him between your legs as much as possible while flipping around. Behind you, you felt him lean over and rummage in the ice bucket again. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw his hand come back dripping, with a whole handful of ice.

“Shh. This will be even better, you’ll see.” As he gently placed one hand on the back of your head and tilted it back down, you felt a cold block adorn your shoulders and hummed appreciatively.

He started arranging the cubes like a hot stone massage pattern on your back, his fingertips gliding on your warm skin between them now and then. In fact, he was a little distracted for a moment lining them up along your spine just so, and you stifled a giggle at his fussing, as much because the shaking would have dislodged his artful ice work as because he would have sulked terribly if he thought his efforts weren’t genuinely helping. And actually, they were- the cold was diffusing nicely between the cubes, carried in the water that spread from them across your skin as they began to melt slightly in the hot night air. They were many enough and evenly distributed enough that their touch was an all-over buzz, not a pinpoint cold sting, that was comfortable and soothing on your flushed skin.

“There we go,” he said at last, sitting back to admire his handiwork and resting his hands on your upper thighs. “How’s that feel?”

“Nice,” you confirmed, peering back at him over your shoulder. He leaned over you, his folded legs nestled between yours and one hand propping him up beside your shoulders as he pressed the back of the other to your forehead.

“Mm. Feels a little better.”

“Feels a lot better.” You raised your arm to tug him down beside you, eyes dark. “Now, c’mere.”

“Ah-ah,” he said lightly, batting your hand away playfully. “No wriggling, now.”

You stayed still, but frowned back at his smirk at his decline and instruction. “I don’t remember agreeing we were going to play like that.”

“Uh.“ The teasing tone immediately left his voice and instead became hesitant and worried again. “You don’t want to? You want to stop?”

Damn it, he could be so sweet, the way he turned on a dime for your safety. The way his uncanny eyes widened nervously if you made him pause, and darkened with confidence if you let him take control again. Yes, you had wanted to just drag him astride you and get on with it, but…

Gods, the boyish, pouty anticipation that made its way onto his lined face when he was waiting for your permission…

“...No,” you admitted eventually. “No, I don’t want to stop.” You turned your head back to rest on the sheets, still looking at him out of the corner of your eye, exposing your throat. “Play, then, Your Eminence.”

“Oh, good,” he breathed, and you felt his hand come to rest in the small of your back where melting ice was puddling. In daily life, he seemed to come on go on whether he cared for titles and honorifics or not, but when he had you caught between himself and the nearest flat-ish surface, it was a rather different story. “Alright. Now, remember… no wriggling.”

His fingers went back to drawing idle patterns over your skin between the ice, this time dipping lower over your buttocks and thighs. You sighed, but kept still.

“Good girl,” he murmured lowly, and ironically enough that was what made your hips cant a little bit under his hand, sending water trickling a little here and there. “Ah-ah,” he smirked, “you were doing so well.”

His fingernails dug into your thigh.

“Ow, mmf, “ you huffed, hoping that vocalising it might take away the impetus to arch and sprawl under him. He seemed to be showing mercy when he loosened his grip, but then he dragged those nails up your inner thigh, not quite far enough for you. Your hands kneaded the sheets, trying to re-route your frustration and keep your hips still, but your shoulders rolled and shuddered instead when he let his index and middle finger slide just once down between your legs, barely touching. You tipped your head back, lips bitten. There was ice running down your side, tingling, and his nails now scraping your backside, creating similar sensations.

The vicious smack that landed right across your ass and dangerously near to your increasing wetness was completely unexpected, and brought out of you an embarrassingly squealy sound that started in pain and ended in a moan, driving your hips to buck forwards into the mattress and your shoulders to bunch up wildly. Your sudden motion finally sent all the ice tumbling off your back and down your ribs and thighs.

“Oh, look at that,” he tutted, his voice loaded with condescension as you settled back down, the sting still reverberating on your backside. “You’ve shaken off all my hard work, there.” He patted your stinging behind, ignoring the furious whine you buried in the pillow. “Look, ice water everywhere. I knew I would make you soak the sheets tonight, darling, but I didn’t realise it would be this easy.”

“You cheated.” That sounded childish, but to be fair, he had fucking cheated.

“I do not cheat. The senior clergy is not for cheats. I only exploit existing loopholes and weaknesses,” he said loftily. “Turn back over, now.”

“Cheat,” you mumbled as you rolled again. It wasn’t a worthy comeback at all, but the melted ice you’d shed onto the sheets felt distractingly good under your back.

“Ah, enough of that. Hands above your head,” he instructed sharply, gesturing. You obliged, raising both arms to rest the backs of your hands on the pillow above you, wrists crisscrossed. There was nothing here to bind them with, but you had discovered his taste for that the last time, so you did your best to recreate that effect while he plucked another chip of ice from the bucket.

“I guess if you can’t keep still and behave,” he turned the ice deftly in his fingers, catching the light in it, “I will have to make sure these get where they need to go myself, huh?”

He lowered his hand, and the cold fresh ice came to rest on your nipple.

It stung like a bitch, and you would have made your displeasure vocally known if his other hand hadn’t come up to your other breast, squeezing and stroking, converting your snarl of protest into a slightly confused yelp of enjoyment.

He couldn’t help it, he had to remove the ice with a flourish and dip his head down to lap the water from you. You dug your hands hard enough into the bedsheets to rip cloth, groaning at his warm tongue on the stiff and sensitive skin, and his hair was falling over his eyes when he raised his face again. Then he returned his hand with ice to your body, watching your reactions through messy hair and under thickly-made-up eyelids heavy with lust.

The ice under his palm glided, travelling in slick, hypnotic cooling swirls over your belly and breasts that had you sighing and arching into them, the hard edges scraping over your collarbones. When the cube melted down too small to play with any longer, he left it where it laid to melt away on your skin and plucked another from the bucket.

“I hope you’re ready,” he said brightly.

You didn’t have too much time to work out what you were meant to to be ready for, because the fresh cube went into his palm and straight down to slide over your clit.

“Ooohh, fuck!”

The cold was electric and sent your hips tossing wildly under his hand, although your brain was apparently a little confused about whether it wanted to get away from the ice or rut on it furiously. He didn’t give you much of an option, though, dragging the ice down to your entrance, grinding back against your thrusts, and then gliding back up with only the faintest pressure to circle that sensitive little bundle of nerves. You cursed and begged him- not for anything in particular, just more in general- in the same breath. His hand twisted and cupped firmly, trapping the hot-cold little handful of ice between the heel of his palm and your clit, and allowing the tip of his middle finger to tease your opening.

“Oh, it’s dripping between my fingers.” His exaggeratedly shocked, breathy voice gave you even more reason to squirm against his hand. “I wonder how much of that is melted ice, and how much is your greedy little cunt, needing me.”

That was too much. You stopped being obedient with your hands up, and grabbed him by the shoulders, pulling him down for a needy, slightly drooly deep kiss. You’d hoped it would surprise him, but the little flash of grin you saw before your mouths collided told you, infuriatingly, otherwise.

He only let you attack his lips for a moment, before he tossed his head and pulled back, your hands sliding from his shoulders to rest on his chest. “Oh? I thought you were too hot?” He held his body arched above yours teasingly, his free hand keeping your leg pushed back from hooking around him. His cock was hard and flushed against his soft belly from winding you up like this, but somehow he was resisting his impulses- the only stronger motivator than his constant carnal appetites, apparently, being his love of acting like an utter bastard. “I thought you were far too hot to have my body pressed against you?” He ran his tongue along his lips, struggling to conceal a grin. “All sweaty and sticky… Mhm, terrible.”

“I’m entitled to change my mind.” There was very little dignity to be salvaged here, but you hunted for it anyway, giving him a haughty look.

“Ah, I don’t know,” he murmured doubtfully, giving your thigh a squeeze. “You still look a little warm to me. A little pink in the cheeks, yeah? That’s both sets, by the way. Very cute-”

“Stop being obnoxious and fuck me.” If you ever wrote a memoir about these escapades one day, that was probably going to be the title.

“Hmm.” He idled his hand against you again and you whined. There was heat still in you, alright, but it was a different kind, very deeply seated, and his touch was encouraging it to rise rapidly to the surface. “I don’t know,” he deliberated, “I wouldn’t want you to get all red and dizzy again halfway through.” He smiled, glancing up at the door to the en suite bathroom. “I think I have an idea, though.” He gave you one heavy-lidded, very serious look directly into your eyes as he slowly pulled his hand away from you, drawing out the last little bit of contact until you huffed and twitched at the hips for him. “Wait here until I say, now,” he cautioned, and he slipped away and off the bed, walking into the bathroom slightly bow-legged to manage his arousal.

The sound of surging water echoed in the bathroom. You raised your head, curious, but flopped back down again, just enjoying not having to move or concentrate on anything. Whatever; he would lure you over in due time.

“Come in and join me,” sure enough, his call came from behind the ajar door presently. You mustered all your effort and sat up in the sheets, damp with ice water and sweat, and approached the door, still feeling a little weak at the knees.

It was a pretty plush bathroom; all grey tiles and marble. The bath was an elegant, broad thing, set into a raised block with steps in the middle of the room, and it was in this that he was now partly reclined, smirking, the water just reaching over his belly.

“It’s cold.” He leaned over in the half-filled tub, scooping up the cool water in both hands and raising his arms above his head, letting it trickle down him. “Come in,” he repeated, making sure you could see his hand spreading the cold water around on his torso, ruffling his chest hair. “You’ll feel so much better.”

He tilted his head as you took the high steps into the bath, staring with rapt attention between your legs as if your sex was something new and secret that he hadn’t already been tormenting just five minutes previously.

“Can’t believe you’ve left me the tap end.” You stood and wrinkled your nose down at him, trying not to let it show how nice the cold water was feeling on your feet.

“Don’t be silly,” he purred, one cool, wet hand catching your shin. “Sit in my lap. You can lean back on me and relax.”

You turned and craned over your shoulder awkwardly, lowering into the water between his knees. His made an impatient noise and his hands pawed at your hips as you sat, drawing you back.

“Just making sure I don’t sit on anything essential.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he slid an arm fully around your waist, pulling you back to recline against his chest. The cold water lapped further up your body, a delicious relief. “When you do, it’ll be wholly intentional.” You could hear the obnoxious grin in his voice, and feel his cock still firm against the small of your back, only a little bit diminished by the cold.

He scooped a cupped palm into the cold water beside you and raised it, gently, to your chin, pouring it across your flushed collarbones. It was divinely cooling. He must have appreciated the way you tensed a little at the cold and then sighed with enjoyment, as he kissed the top of your head and made the slightest muffled “mmph” sound into your hair while he scooped up another palm of cold water.

It was working on both of you; there was no discomfort now in feeling his chest pressed to your back. And from his point of view, the puddles of soothing water he was tipping onto your chest split deliciously into separate rivulets as they ran back down your breasts, decorating your curves and crowning your nipples like dew or rain on a lush flower. The next few handfuls of water he carefully let run down your flushed cheeks from your temples, wiping some across your hairline.

“Oh, I thought you didn’t like getting it on your face,” he mused, and you growled and rolled your eyes in response, just wanting more water right now, not his bullshit. Suitably chastised, he went back to silently bathing your front, interspersing handfuls of water with trails of his cool fingers over your neck and chest. You head fit nicely into the crook of his neck, and you let yourself relax into him. He liked that little hint of slight submission; his head tilted so that his cheek could nuzzle into your hair like a cat.

After a while his hand returned to your waist, then quickly slid down a little from there under the waterline, his fingers kneading gentle circles on your lower belly. You stretched against him, raising your hips, encouraging his ministrations lower.

His wandering fingers found their mark, gliding easily against your swollen lips under the cold water.

You arched lazily against him, enjoying the pleasure, but soon wanting for more. You reached back, feeling your way up his neck to stroke his jaw and cup the back of his head, and turned your face upwards to him, pushing his down to you. It wasn’t a very easy angle, but it was utterly, utterly worth the neck and shoulder strain to hear and feel him moan into your kiss, your hand tangled in the roots of his hair, his hand working even harder under the shallow water. The pleasure of the cool bath was mingling with the pleasure of his rubbing fingers and your respective delicious noises, and the ascent he’d brought you partway up before with his cupping, ice-filled palm was building back up again. You tugged his hair back, reluctantly breaking the kiss to speak, although feeling his cock twitch against your back as you did so momentarily drove what you were trying to say from your mind. “Alright, that’s enough,” you breathed once you recovered your senses, still rolling your fingers in his hair. “I’m ready, I’m so ready. Please, Cardinal, you gorgeous old bastard, just fuck me.”

He made a guttural noise that wasn’t immediately identifiable, but was definitely an affirmative in one language or another, and rocked his hips a little. He was really enjoying that tugging and stroking in his thick hair. Gripping either side of the tub you raised yourself in his lap and his free hand moved under you, the other still tucked between your legs. You felt him guide himself into position, his tip teasing your lips, and at his urging purr behind you you lowered yourself onto him.

You weren’t sure if it was the addition of the water or how well-prepared you’d been, but he was quick to hilt in you and while he couldn’t move much, he encouraged you to set up a steady pace with his free hand under your thigh, adding his lift to your rise and fall in his lap. All the while, two of his fingers continued to play between your thighs, shifting from flickering firmly on your clit to parting and massaging your filled lips and back again, working over every inch of sensitive skin.

This wasn’t going to last that long for either of you. Awkward as the position was in terms of the limited space and hard enamel of the tub, he was hitting all sorts of nice spots inside you from this angle, and he was deliciously vocal as always, matching your own soft but erratic sounds each time you sank down and took him deeper. The impending peak sat like a bowling ball in your belly, it just needed a little more push.

“Ahh, yes, Copia sweetheart, like that…” It was a lot of effort to shape your groaning into actual words, but it was worth it to encourage him. He liked hearing you drop your combative front and give him cute little monikers, and labour the foreign structure of his name, one you’d never quite get exactly right, but he enjoyed it all the more for that. “Oh, fuck, I’ve been waiting on this for weeks. I need to come for you… mmh, c’mon, harder-”

“Such a greedy, needy girl.” His voice was thick, more and more heavily accented, losing concentration- but exuding sex and roughness. He picked up on what you were after right away. “So bossy even when you need my help satisfying yourself. Were you wet tonight, watching me captivate everyone earlier, huh? Knowing it was you I’d be taking into my bed later?”

“Mmh, yes,” you breathed, increasing your pace slightly bouncing in his lap, trying not to let your tongue loll out like a thirsty dog- not yet, anyway. “So… wet. Oh, I- uhh-”

It wasn’t quite the contribution you’d planned to make, but it was the best you could manage.

“Soaking through your clothes for me while I teased? While I showed myself in my tight clothes in front of all those people?” His short nails dug painfully hard into your thigh, but the feeling was pale in comparison to the heavy cloud of pressure so close to bursting between your legs. “So shameless,” he purred into the shell of your ear over your choked impatient sounds, “I bet when you see me it’s all you can do not to slide your hand into your pants to play with your wet, aching little cunt right then and there, right in front of me and everyone else.” And he punctuated that with a firm smack, not as hard as earlier but directly across your swollen clit and outer lips, from the hand that had been massaging and flickering on you all this time.

That was all you needed. “Oh fuck, yes, that’s- ahh!”

He must have been holding himself back, because as soon as your voice cracked into a string of frantic cries he made a rasping, dark sound of his own and his arm around your hip became a vice, clamping your writhing hips to him as he buried his pulsing release as deep inside as possible. Still cresting your own wave and feeling his climax in vivid detail too, you had just enough wherewithal to reach back and shove your fingers into his hair again and pull cruelly- just a little fair payment for the use of the flat of his palm now and earlier- and the agonised roll of his whole spine and much higher, noiser gasp that that elicited from him sent a second smaller but no less toe-curling wave through you, moaning each other’s names hungrily.

You sank back from where your orgasm had sent you sitting bolt upright in his lap, resting again on his water-droplet-speckled and now heaving chest. A little wiggling and manhandling eased the pair of you apart, which was an even stranger sensation than usual under water, and the way a little patch of thicker whiteness blossomed like smoke in the plain water between your thighs in his wake managed to look dirty, fascinating and sweet all at once. He nuzzled firmly into the top of your head again, crooning quietly in a jumble of languages to himself, and his arms both wrapped around your waist, his thumbs circling the wet skin of your sides where they rested.

Presently both your breathing slowed back down, falling into the same rhythm. “Don’t fall asleep,” you said gently, reaching up and back to pat his cheek.

“Mmh,” he started against you a little bit at the touch. “Just, uh, resting my eyes.”

“We should probably get out of this thing.” You dabbled a hand lazily on the top of the water, spreading ripples. It was no longer ice-cold and fresh.

“And into that hot bed? With covers?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Hmm.” He tightened his arms around your torso, keeping you close. “Or just stay here, no?”

“Well, we could always order a fresh bottle of champagne. You know.” Your hand sank deeper in the water beside you, and you ran your palm from his knee up to his hip. “With an ice bucket.”

He made a thoughtful sound.

“And charge it to management.”

You could hear the grin sneaking back into his voice. “That is... very true. We could do that.”


End file.
